Text Size

-

+

reset

As a Marine lieutenant in Iraq in 2004, Duncan Hunter was poised for an assault on Fallujah when the order came down from Washington to pull out instead. It was the kind of top-down military decision — which in this case had to be reversed when security in Fallujah later deteriorated — that Hunter hopes will not be repeated in Afghanistan.
AP Photo

Digg/Buzz It Up

POLITICO 44

As a Marine lieutenant in Iraq in 2004, Duncan Hunter was poised for an assault on Fallujah when the order came down from Washington to pull out instead. It was the kind of top-down military decision — which in this case had to be reversed when security in Fallujah later deteriorated — that Hunter hopes will not be repeated in Afghanistan.

Now, five years later and a freshman congressman from California, Hunter is in a much better position to have his voice heard. As an Iraq war veteran, he has been enlisted by the House Republican leadership to help make its case that President Barack Obama should support Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan — and do it soon.

In some ways, he is reprising the role that Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania has played for the Democrats. Murphy, who saw action in Iraq in 2003 with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, was elected to Congress in 2006. Encouraged by his party, he became a spokesman against the Iraq war, though, right now, the only thing he’ll say about McChrystal’s request is that he’s “still working through it.”

Hunter and Murphy are two of the five current House members who deployed to support Afghanistan or Iraq. Of the others, one, Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado, is a Republican, and the other two, Reps. John Boccieri of Ohio and Tim Walz of Minnesota, are Democrats.

Overall, the number of veterans in Congress is shrinking — 121 in this session, down five from the prior session, according to the Congressional Research Service. Among those Republicans who left office was Hunter’s father, an Army veteran, who represented the same district as his son. The departure of Hunter and others left the party without a high-powered veteran to lead the Afghanistan debate — at least not in the way Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has done in the Senate.

Earlier this month, after House Minority Leader John Boehner issued a four-page memo outlining his thoughts on Afghanistan for House Republicans, Georgia Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, rounded up Hunter and three other freshmen on the committee who were also recent veterans to speak on the war — Coffman, an Army reservist who served in Iraq in 2005; Florida Rep. Tom Rooney, a former Army attorney; Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, a former Navy doctor; and Texas Rep. Pete Olson, a Navy pilot during the Gulf War.

“We’re waiting for the great Afghanistan speech from the president to be inspired,” Rooney said. “I know the troops want to hear it.”

It’s a message the Republican leadership also wants to circulate and promote from its new class of veterans. As Obama appeared to be wavering on the question of troop levels, Republicans wanted to weigh in with a statement that had military legitimacy.

Rooney and Hunter recently spoke about the war on the House floor and have met periodically with conservative defense analyst Fred Kagan. When Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) were looking for volunteers to speak about the war, they stepped up to the plate.

“Obviously, folks with firsthand experience as military officers are particularly effective in speaking about these issues,” said Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel. “They have firsthand experience working on the issue. There’s a degree of greater credibility there.”

Rooney has been generally supportive of Obama and thinks he is on the right path so far in Afghanistan — from the appointments he has made to the strategy he laid out in March to bringing in McChrystal to provide that strategy with more focus, Rooney said. All of this has gone a long way with those in the military, he said, but there’s more Obama could do.

“If he listens to McChrystal, he will have a lot of support from people that served in the military, respecting the fact that he respects what the generals want to do,” Rooney said.

Readers' Comments (20)

I wonder if it's that simple? I don't think so. In addition, leading with the military is only one of the several options that are available for trying to contain the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation. And you will note that I do not separate them. I do not think they can be legitimately separated when you are dealing with a border so porous that it might as well not be there and local patterns of traditional migration and movement which do not recognize the borders.

Afghanistan/Pakistan may require an increase in other types of "soft power". For example, supporting the increased activity of the Pakistan government against Al Queda and Taliban forces in Waziristan is a great first step. A year ago, the Pakistani govt would not have dared to go into Waziristan fro fear of the reprisals against Pakistani police and army stations. They are growing a backbone, and we can help them in that.

In Afganistan, we can help the locals fight the taliban, we should not be fighting the Taliban for them. We should not be placing our soldiers in the position where they are seen as the enemy, as the outside, invading force that is causing the problems and destruction in the country.

I don't think this situation is as cut and dried as some would believe and I most certainly don't think that a "John Wayne" "call out the troops" approach is the best one for this difficult situation.

I wonder if it's that simple? I don't think so. In addition, leading with the military is only one of the several options that are available for trying to contain the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation. And you will note that I do not separate them. I do not think they can be legitimately separated when you are dealing with a border so porous that it might as well not be there and local patterns of traditional migration and movement which do not recognize the borders.

Afghanistan/Pakistan may require an increase in other types of "soft power". For example, supporting the increased activity of the Pakistan government against Al Queda and Taliban forces in Waziristan is a great first step. A year ago, the Pakistani govt would not have dared to go into Waziristan fro fear of the reprisals against Pakistani police and army stations. They are growing a backbone, and we can help them in that.

In Afganistan, we can help the locals fight the taliban, we should not be fighting the Taliban for them. We should not be placing our soldiers in the position where they are seen as the enemy, as the outside, invading force that is causing the problems and destruction in the country.

I don't think this situation is as cut and dried as some would believe and I most certainly don't think that a "John Wayne" "call out the troops" approach is the best one for this difficult situation.

Part of the problem is that people tend to think that all veterans are of the same opinions, their not. Veterans are no differant than non veterans except they have actually experianced the reality and frustrations of war. Political views are as diverse as anybody else. Certainly there are former soldiers who support the wars. There are just as many who oppose the wars. Soldiers may "march in lockstep" on the parade ground but they are still individuals with their own minds and their own opinions. You can't parade a veteran and claim that his views represent anyone but himself.

This indecision by the muslim street pimp burns me up. How dare he strut around like a peacock, partying, playing golf and basketball while our military men and women are dying in that God-forsaken country!! He's only waiting for our elections on Nov. 2nd, not the Afghanistan elections, so the far-left loons won't desert them. He will send the troops and they will be ****ed. Sorriest president ever in the WH.

Why is it that most Politician's think they know whats best. Including Presidents.

They seem to always start the wars, but then they don't let the military Comanders do the job.

WWII President Truman should have listened to General Patton and gone after the soviets.9 IE: No cold war) pRESIDENT tRUMAN should of listened to McArthur to finish the war in Korea.

President Johson listened to his advisors for years after 33,000 soldiers died only bombing soft targets, never going after Hanoi or Haifong Harbor. The war would have been woon much earlier if we had. President Nixon did listen and made a surge into Cambodia which indeed helped us. I was there.

When the North wouldn't sign the peace trety he order the mass bombing of Hanoi & the Harbor it only took a couple of weeks before they signed it.

President Carter was full of it not taking action on Iran, we wouldn't be having the trouble today.

President Reagan failed not taking action on several terriorist bombings.

President Bush 1 should have gone all the way and finished Gulf war 1 and taken out Sadam.

Santions by the U.N. didn't work.

President Clinton did the same 8 years of no fly zones and letting Afganistan and Iraq fester.

Santions by the U.N. didnt work.

President Bush 2 at least declared war on terriorism ( not police action ) but should have made the decision of only taking on Afganistan. But Iran was still a treat and I still believe they had weapons of mass destruction. The World knew it with the inspectors going in and then not allowed in how many times.

This is a complicated situation. I know that I don't fully understand all of the angles. At least I admit it unlike so many who just want to pick a fight with the current administration. War is not as simple as the slogan "support our troops" suggests. Of course we all support our troops, but it might be that bringing them home is the best support we can provide. I hate the idea of keeping young people away from their families for a country that doesn't seem to be able to solve any of their own problems. I'm all for giving countries a boost but Iraq and Afghanistan need way more than we can commit right now. On the other hand, I don't want to be blown to hell by terrorists either. Anyway, my point is jut that we should give our President some leeway and understand that no matter what he does, some one will scream about it. He is a smart and capable leader and I'm sure whatever decision he makes will be an informed decision.

I am optimistic that we can do the right thing in Afghanistan and I support the troops and our president.

Obamey is a coward, he should know that a president can never please all the people. Stop playing around it's time to make a desision. Give the troops all the help or get the hell out of there. If his kids were in that hell hole he would know what to do TODAY!.

Maybe this should be addressed while the commander in chief brushes up on his golf game. Maybe the answer to why he doesn't listen to his generals lies within his spring break trip to Pakistan. A trip the media still ignores.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama enters a rally at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2008.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (CNSNews.com) – As the presidential election campaign draws to a close, unanswered questions about Barack Obama’s three-week visit to Pakistan 27 years ago continue to cause unease in some quarters, but his campaign has revealed few details.

Last April during a San Francisco fundraiser, Obama referred briefly to a visit he had made to Pakistan during his college years.

Campaign press secretary Bill Burton subsequently gave inquiring journalists a few facts. Obama had visited Pakistan for “about three weeks” in 1981, after visiting his mother in Indonesia. He had traveled with a college friend whose family lived in Karachi. He had also visited Hyderabad in India, Burton said.

Word of the visit surprised observers. The Democratic presidential hopeful has not mentioned it before while campaigning, nor has he written about it in either of his memoirs.

“[It] was news to many of us who have been following the race closely,” wrote ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper at the time. “And it was odd that we hadn’t heard about it before, given all the talk of Pakistan during this campaign.”

The news sparked considerable discussion online, with questions asked about why and how an American college student would have visited Pakistan at that time and what he would have done there.

(The remark in San Francisco was a passing one, evidently aimed at boosting his foreign policy credentials in relation to those of Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Having visited Pakistan, Obama said, he knew the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam before he became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

A few more details of the visit trickled out over the following months.

The 1981 visit took place after Obama left Occidental College in Los Angeles to transfer to Columbia University in New York that same year.

Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Muhammed Hasan Chandoo. Now a financial consultant in Armonk, N.Y., and an Obama fundraiser, Chandoo on Sunday declined to comment. He confirmed he was Obama’s “friend” and former “roommate,” but said, “I decided at the beginning of the campaign that I’d stay out of this whole game.”

According to published reports in Pakistan, Obama in 1981 also stayed at the home of a prominent politician, Ahmad Mian Soomro, in an upscale Karachi suburb, and went on a traditional partridge hunting trip north of Karachi. Soomro’s son, Muhammad Mian Soomro, is a senior politician who served as acting president before the appointment of President Asif Ali Zardari last September.

Ahmad Mian Soomro died in 1999, and attempts to reach his son for comment were unsuccessful.

An Associated Press story in May mentioned several of Obama’s Pakistani college friends, as well as an Indian friend, Vinai Thummalapally from Hyderabad, India.

The following month the Times of India, citing Thummalapally, said Obama’s staff got it wrong – Obama had not visited Hyderabad in India but Hyderabad in Pakistan.

(Hyderabad in Pakistan is a three-hour drive from Karachi. A city of about 1.5 million people – around 750,000 in 1981 – it boasts a famous bazaar. Hyderabad in India is about 900 miles from Karachi. Capital of Andhra Pradash state, it has a mostly Hindu population of about six million and is renowned for visitor attractions including forts and temples.)

Obama may have visited Pakistan again later, when his mother, Ann Dunham, held a microfinance job there in the mid-1980s.

A Lahore-based Urdu newspaper, Daily Waqt, reported last August that Dunham worked as a consultant for a Pakistan Agricultural Development Bank program that ran from 1987 to 1992.

The project was in Gujranwala, the paper said, but Dunham stayed at a hotel in nearby Lahore, where Obama reportedly visited her. Dunham died in Hawaii in 1995.

Dangerous destination

Southwestern Asia was a risky place for a Westerner to visit in 1981, although it is unclear whether travel to Pakistan was actually restricted. (The U.S. government at the time advised against visits to Afghanistan and had recently lifted a ban on travel to Iran.)

Two years earlier, the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan; the Islamic revolution toppled the Shah in Iran; a frenzied mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, setting it on fire and killing a U.S. Marine and two Pakistanis; and military ruler Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq hanged former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – Benazir Bhutto’s father – whose government he had ousted in a 1977 coup.

The year Obama visited was also a particularly dangerous one for Americans. During a hijacking that March of a Pakistan passenger liner, three Americans onboard were singled out and threatened with death. (Interestingly, two of the three turned out to be wanted in the U.S. and Canada, respectively, for drug-related offenses. Pakistan at the time was a major source of heroin distributed in the U.S., along with fellow “golden crescent” states Iran and Afghanistan.)

Pakistan in 1981 also was awash with Afghan refugees who had fled their homeland after the Soviet invasion – two million by the end of that year. In Karachi Afghan arrivals added to simmering sectarian and inter-ethnic tensions that was to blight Pakistan’s largest city during the 1980s and 1990s.

The U.S. in 1981 stepped up funding, via Pakistan, to Afghans fighting the Soviet forces. Thousands of Arab and other foreign mujahideen flocked to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join the war.

In the early 1980s, a Palestinian ideologue named Abdullah Azzam was coordinating the jihad from Peshawar, near the Afghanistan border. Azzam, who also taught at Islamabad’s International Islamic University, visited America numerous times during the 1980s, urging support for the war in Afghanistan.

Described as a charismatic orator, he told fanciful tales of Islamic warriors not being harmed by Soviet tanks and bullets, and slain martyrs whose corpses did not decay.

Azzam’s Peshawar center was known as the Afghan Bureau. His deputy and financier was a Saudi named Osama bin Laden. Azzam is regarded by many scholars as having laid the ideological groundwork for modern-day jihad. After his assassination in a 1989 bomb blast, bin Laden took over the bureau and developed what would become al-Qaeda.

‘Morbid thoughts’

How much – if anything – the 19- or 20-year-old Obama knew about the Afghanistan jihad during that 1981 visit is unclear.

But it’s precisely the shortage of details that worries some, like veteran security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman, a former Indian counterterrorism chief.

Mulling how a President Obama would deal with each of South Asia’s historical foes, Raman said that as an Indian, he naturally felt troubled that Obama had not disclosed the Pakistan visit earlier.

“Why did he keep mum on his visit to Pakistan till this question was raised?” asked Raman, who is the director of India’s Institute for Topical Studies. “Has he disclosed all the details regarding his Pakistan visit? Was it as innocuous as made out by him – to respond to the invitation of a Pakistani friend or was there something more to it?”

Raman continued, “As I read about Obama’s visit to Pakistan in the 1980s, I could not help thinking of dozens of things. Of the Afghan jihad against communism. Of the fascination of many Afro-Americans for the jihad. Of the visits of a stream of Afro-Americans to Pakistan to feel the greatness of the jihad. Of their fascination for Abdullah Azzam …”

Raman said although having such thoughts may seem “morbid,” it was “understandable when one has a feeling that one has not been told the whole story, but only a part of it.”

“It is the right of the Americans to decide who should be their president,” he said. “It is my right to worry about the implications of their decision for the rest of the world, including India.”

The Obama campaign did not respond to an invitation to comment on some of the speculation surrounding the visit to Pakistan or to provide further details about the trip.

Heck you don't need veterans to give you advice. When you have a "president" who is too busy attending fundraisers in Florida and golfing to meet with a top general whose advice he is ignoring, the speeches write themselves. And it amazing and hilarious to read long-winded treatises on foreign policy and military tactics describing how complicated things are in Afghanistan from commenters on this blog, as if they somehow have information, miltary plans and insights that Petraeus and McChrystal haven't already considered. It is almost as pathetic as Moveon.org second-guessing Petraeus on Iraq and the surge.

Once the country is stablilized then ideas can compete for attention v. bombs. I don't have anything against Obama for example. I don't show pictures of his mother or go TO DEEP into his past out of respect for human diginity. On the otherhand, the liberals and their band of socialist ideas, are a cancer to society. I don't have to attack Obama for his color or his sex, or his gender, or his race or any other factor. But I can show you how years of Democratic thought and socialist compassion has had an opposite effect. Take Michigan's masses of unemployed workers at GM who cling to unions to the efficient auto workers in Georgia at Korean auto plants. One is a Republican model and people are working and one is a Democrat model where people are idle, frustrated and running out of unemployment insurance guranteed from a bankrupt government.

So no one should be offended when I call President Obama a communist, or perhaps has a dubious past. His actions match the rhetoric. Most people's actions match their rhetoric. The idea that people DONT do what they say they are going to do is the travesty. When Barney Frank says he is going to nationalize everything, you should darn well be scared to death. Americans have a RIGHT to BE SCARED to death with Democrats running the show. If you surround yourself with homosexual radicals and communists (some of which were bred by the ideology of soviet agents going all the way back to the 1930s in Chicago, San Fransisco and Hawaii) then Americans have a right to question the direction the country is going.

Afghans have a right to question US strategy as does Iraqis and Chinese and everyone else. Part of the problem is on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq for sure, but let's face the facts. Part of the problem is in the White House. How could the Afghan war be URGENT when Kerry and Obama said it was of the utmost urgency, and now it is not urgent?

Words mean something, and now Americans are feeling it in the pocket book as well.

The problem is now actually broader than just Afghanistan. The Pashto tribe which makes up the Taliban stretches over the border into Pakistan. Because the US failed to contain nuclear proliferation under Bill Clinton, we now have a large stockpile of nukes in Pakistan, a potentional stock pile in N. Korea and Iran to announce anytime that will become a nuclear weapon member of the "club".

With the Taliban being well funded by individuals in the Gulf States, they have the potential means of taking over Pakistan's supply of weapons. That is an open prize that now conserns agents of every country, I am sure. The bottom line is that at the current rate of proliferation then more than just states will be able to threaten others with nuclear weapons, and lesser than state organizations (Taliban, Al Queda, and so forth) could potentially become supplied with one or more weapons.

This has a follow on threat because a state with a sizable number of weapons (Russia or China for example and soon Iran) could follow onto a rather containable nuclear/radiological terrorist attack with a mass attack under the cloud of the chaos.

Part of the problem is that people tend to think that all veterans are of the same opinions, their not. Veterans are no differant than non veterans except they have actually experianced the reality and frustrations of war. Political views are as diverse as anybody else. Certainly there are former soldiers who support the wars. There are just as many who oppose the wars. Soldiers may "march in lockstep" on the parade ground but they are still individuals with their own minds and their own opinions. You can't parade a veteran and claim that his views represent anyone but himself.

Completely true.

I came back after 16 months in Vietnam in the Marines convinced it was stupid and un-winnable, because you could not identify the enemy, and I saw that for every innocent Vietnamese we killed, we created more who hated us.

Afghanistan has resisted the best efforts of the British and Soviets.

Just like Vietnam, the sham elections in Iraq and Afghanistan fool nobody, and the corruption breeds contempt for the government.

This is a holy war, jihad. We cannot win with weapons and troops. The Taliban is fighting for God’s word in government and we are fighting to keep it out. God fights for those who want Him, even when the odds a 12-1 and mighty armaments with the enemies. If we wanted God to rule, we could easily correct their excesses even as we correct our own errors. The Kingdom of God is where God’s word rules; we do not get it until we want it.

Before this began in 2001, I said If we win this war without the word of God being brought in, there is no God. God is proving Himself true to His word. He promised terror and 4 x 7 curses and more to those who reject His wisdom. Most of the word of God is secular wisdom how to live on this planet with out destroying it and each other. It will be the same 5 years from now and 10 years from now.

God said this time is like birth pangs, (pain is closer together and more painful) until the birth of faith.

The way is prepared for peace. We only have to believe God can bring it about. He has coordinated and cross referenced prophets around the world to unite us. Each religion is ignoring the written word of God to their prophets and following the errors of religion passed down. When they want to follow as IT IS WRITTEN there can be peace. The true Mahdi, Messiah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Savior etc. is The Word of God. Only when we believe can we be saved.

If the Hunters had their way, we'd still be fighting in Vietnam and the Memorial would stretch for miles. Losing 58,000 Americans was a horrific unnecessary tragedy, and the so-called war on terror is even worse.